Approaching the Creation Museum
Jump to first exhibit
The architecture of the Creation Museum is designed to disorient, confuse, seduce,
and finally control. To begin with, Museum goers face walls-upon-walls en route
to the exhibits themselves: an impressive fence with gated entry and
security cameras surrounds the museum and gardens; one-way glass keeps
the curious from peering into the museum from outside; and a
wrap-around interior stone wall hides the galleries until the museum
ticket has been presented...
(at which point most visitors have already supplied contact
information to receive a discount, enabling the Creation Museum to
develop a database that the museum estimates will grow by up to a
million visitors this year - there were well over 2000 visitors the day
we visited, and we have since received extensive promotional materials
from the museum and the network of fundamentalist institutions that are
her friends.)
Falling Through the Rabbit Hole
Even more fundamentally, the construction is an asymmetrical maze of
odd angles and strange curves that cause rapid loss of sense of
direction once inside. There are few directions, but the disorientation
goes far beyond lack of signage: once in, you are shunted through the
funnel of Slot Canyon down into the rabbit hole of the main exhibit, a one way path with no means of escape save through the Last Adam Theater.
By design, this construction gives you no real choice but to go along
for the ride, and frankly you will often have little to no idea where
you are - the map itself is a highly ambiguous - nor any sense of when
you will complete your journey, what you will encounter along the way,
or where you will come out on the other side.
Much like Alice in Wonderland, once you have begun your downward spiraling fall, this environment envelops, controls, and in a disconcerting sense digests
you - if this strikes you as a strange word choice, keep in mind that
the main exhibition which winds its way downward into the bowels of the
basement is literally shaped like the digestive tract
(see numbers23-26 on the map)?
From here you can explore each exhibit within the
Creation Museum in a non-linear fashion.
Each exhibit page will allow you to return to the Exhibits Index at any time.
To experience the tour as it is normally presented to visitors, press the arrow below.
Begin Tour!
or choose a specific exhibit:
Exhibits 01 |
Exhibits 02 |
Exhibits 03 |
Exhibits 04
|
Exhibits 05
|
Exhibits 06
|
Exhibits 07 |
Exhibits 08
|
Exhibits 9 |
(top)
